is that what he thinks about a hypothetical stream with you as the host?
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I asked him who he imagined was hosting and he said āold peopleā so apparently thatās how he imagines the iNat identifier crowd 
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I have zero interest in becoming popular or monetising, and almost no intent to coordinate with anyone more than to check if theyāre already streaming at the very moment. Others may want to have a regular schedule, but mine would be dependent on my health and inherently irregular.
I know itās possible for one account to host other account, and that might be a viable workaround. It still divides our audience though.
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I had a go with VSeeFace, using Adobe Character Animator to make an avatar.
I found just VSeeFace alone to be slowing things down on my laptop.
Useful bit of software thoughā¦I hadnĀ“t come across it.
I think voiceover is important and video definitely great if user has no problem with lack of anonymity.
But IĀ“m not sure what advantage an avatar really offers anyhow personally. I guess just a stylistic decisionā¦
I started setting up OBS and Twitch too to explore but will have to come back to it.
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. old souls for sure.
awesome! canāt wait to see your first stream.
it definitely uses significant resources. i never experienced a slowdown, but my laptop has a relatively new 11th-gen Intel i7 processor and 16GB of RAM. so maybe older laptops might struggle. following the performance tuning tips in the FAQs on the VSeeFace homepage, i was able to dial down some settings to reduce GPU usage from about 50% to about 5%, and CPU usage from about 25% to 15%.
i think with a stream, itās nice to be able to see general expressions of the host. so if youāre not broadcasting your human face, an avatar is a nice second option that can help you retain a bit of anonymity and / or project a different image. if you donāt have great studio lighting and a fancy camera, sometimes an avatar might provide a nicer image than a webcam shot, even if you have a gorgeous face and donāt mind broadcasting it.
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Ok I did a testā¦itĀ“s almost unwatchable - very glitchy recordingā¦ (it wasnĀ“t like that in reality)ā¦I guess just not the best internet connectionā¦ plus my Macbook is really old.
Interesting to do though anyhow. Coarse European Diptera is a pretty niche topic so I canĀ“t see it being of interest to that many! ItĀ“s also just quite a slow process to do and explain at same time. I guess better to do with other people commenting maybe to add a bit more dynamism. If anyone wants to experiment with that, let me know - curious to try it out. Maybe it would help if stream length was shorter, and/or more focussed somehow also.
It really makes you question the limits of your knowledge, as you have to justify every decision and feel you are under a spotlightā¦ .which is healthy but also pretty intimidating. If any dipterists watch it, please be kind! I probably made some incorrect IDs / said some incorrect things.
I imagine if I did it more it would lead to me fixing bad habits which could be good.
I used the Twitch Studio app in the end, not OBS, so it was really straightforward to setup. I just had to change the settings in my Twitch profile to make sure it saved the stream.
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Watching your stream now; very helpful as someone who wants to improve my Diptera ID ability! Are you planning to upload it to YouTube or somewhere else where it can remain long-term?
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Ahh cool, glad to hear itĀ“s of use to someone :)
HadnĀ“t thought about Youtubeā¦its a good pointā¦ I did see that there are limitations on how long it remains on Twitch, but thought maybe that was no bad thing! I guess good if I preserve somehowā¦ but I can also just do another one and try and fix the glitching issues.
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i only had time to watch a few minutes for now, but it was very nicely done. as @arboretum_amyās husband, predicted, it was quite soothing. keep doing more, and let us know when youāre going to start streaming next time so that we can drop by the live stream!
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Iāve contemplated doing this, but of observations I upload. Like a virtual hike, basically. Follow me down this trail! Hereās what I saw that day!
I basically donāt do anything unless its social, and thus the majority of my observations never actually become observations because they arenāt uploaded. I tought streaming might get me to do it, but I wasnāt sure Iād have anyone to watch, and Iām also so busy doing other things.
Also streams where two people are having a conversation are more fun, I think. Because then you can hear the other personās voice, and thatās better than typed questions.
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I would love to stream myself going around and taking pictures of stuff but I would have no idea how to go about doing it haha. Something like a go pro attached to my head with my phone somehow connected to a screen capture, all of which would be super hard to do haha. But now I see you mean just the identifying part which would still be fun
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Ooh that would be great too. Live-streaming observing would be cool to understand different approaches and fieldcraft
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i think observing in general is a little harder to stream, since streaming is easiest when you can be physically in one location with good connection, computer, camera, microphone, and lights, though itās definitely possible to do all on a mobile device, moving through multiple locations, too.
some kinds of observing i think would make good streams are things like prepping slides for microscopy, setting up spore prints, pressing plants, pinning insects, behind the scenes during a macro photography session, fishing, window birdwatching, etc.
iām guessing a hike sort of live stream as @tparkeressig talked about will have to lean heavily towards banter between multiple parties, since iām guessing itāll be really hard to really convey the experience outdoors over a distance on just a phone and also to monitor your audience activity while youāre on the move. also, there are some additional factors that are hard to control when youāre moving around outdoors a lot, such as connection quality, accidentally including unwilling participants in your stream, and potentially even stalkers. (iām guessing it would be much easier to eliminate the audience interaction aspect of a stream and capture video of your hike on a GoPro or other camera and then edit / upload once you get home.)
that said, i would love to also see some observing streams, too. (i was just thinking that identification streams would be a relatively low-barrier way for folks to stream and share knowledge.)
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I would join that Twitch stream in a heartbeat.
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i was thinking about this a little more, and maybe a hike stream would be doable as long as you work in several long stops. so a lot of the general banter can happen along the way to the various stops, and then you can set up and do a lot of the detailed observations at the stops.
i think a birding-by-ear stream would be especially suited for this kind of thing. you could walk around to maybe 5 different spots, and linger at each spot for 10-20 minutes and just listen to whatās out there, while your phone is set up on a tripod or something like that so that your hands are free. you could get audience participation to try to figure out what different bird sounds are. if you have a good birding camera with you and are able to locate the birds, you could also take photos and show the photos on the stream. or maybe you could mount your phone on a scope and show whatās going on that way?
there are so many birders in the world, and i wonder if there are a lot of birders who have lost their sight or mobility but still would be really good companion birders on a birding stream? or maybe there are plenty of people who just would enjoy watching someone else do some birding out in the world?
or maybe, leaning into the idea of birders who have lost their sight, i wonder if there might be such an audience who might enjoy an identification session where bird observation photos are described so that they can do some identification by proxy that way?
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This whole concept is very interesting. I have just been mulling over the stumbling blocks that some of my friends hit as they try to figure out what to do with observations they have recorded but canāt wrap their head around uploading them and figuring out how to do the initial identification. I was thinking if I could figure out how to screen share with them and walk them through those observations and then at the same time allow others to watch.
I know someone who had thought about programming a way to make eBird checklists using speech-to-text so that he could do it while livestreaming a birding trip. I donāt know if heās actually done any streaming and I know that program is low on his priority list, but at least someoneās thought about it.
(Iād also love this ability for recording birds while biking or driving)
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iāve never done it myself, but hereās something that talks about a couple of options for multiperson streaming using either Skype or VDO.Ninja: https://blog.bluemic.com/gaming/multi-person-twitch-stream/. just looking at the two options there, it seems like the VDO.Ninja option would be easier to set up. if i understand what it is correctly, it provides a mechanism to conduct what is effectively a P2P videoconference call via OBS (without going through a central server, except for an initial handshake, i think).
Twitch itself has a way to do what they call a Squad Stream, but i think this is reserved for āPartnerā-level streamers.
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a few people including myself have been streaming on the discord server. itās less technical than twitch, has a quarter the CPU requirements, and thereās always people around so no waiting for an audience
but maybe it can be fed along to twitch idk
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which channel are you all using?